But it's funny! Mr. V offered to not censor "A thread", it can be flame war, off topic, whatever... I will take up on his offer and post something wayyy off [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG]

I and a fellow classmate/ aikidoist were chatting about what "nonsense" it is to practice jo/ bokken - nobody walks around with that kind of stuff anymore. We then proceed to talk about using mugs instead...

You know those stainless steel thermo mugs that every student carries with them on campus? (even in the computer lab!) We were discussing what we can do with it in self defense. With a mug in hand, you can forget about conditioning your knuckles; you can probably even disarm a knife with the handle; you can put it between you and the aggressor's knuckle, you can use it for leverage...

So I told David, "When I become a grand master in 7 different arts and qualify to make my own system, I will create "Mug-Do", and I will give you credit"

"Yes, Mug Do!"

"The way of Mugging people!"

"No! Kendo isn't the way of swording people, it's the way of the sword. Mug Do is the way of the mug!"

"The way of swording people! How about aikido? The way of aikiing people, that's kind of nice"

I would say they are the standard. BTW, Mug Do reminds me of a flashback.....We used to go to a redneck diner in Louisiana, called BJ's. When we would leave, we would drop like $5.00 in the jukebox and play "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N Roses about a bazillion times, just to annoy the natives. So I'm dropping about 20 quarters into the juke box, and these rednecks come up to stop me. One of them reaches out to grab me, and my buddy Jonas Devlin clocks him in the skull with a palmed coffee mug. MY HERO. We beat the other redneck down and then ran for our car, as the waitress was calling the M.P.s. Mug-Do is alive and well, and being taught to elite Army forces! (okay, welders and machinists, but whatever.)

When I was a year or so into Aikido, I used to carry my jo and bokken in a home-made weapon bag that ties onto my back. I walked around campus all day with it for months and tried not to be too self-concious about it. But when the engineerers start calling me geek, I decided it might not be such a good idea after all...

I probably won't be surprised about people keeping jo in their car. Most aikidoist I know do that, not so much for self defense purpose, but because they never practice outside the dojo anyway and they are too lazy to move their jo out of their car XD

I think David's point is that statistically speaking (this conversation started in a particularly boring statistic class), you have a much better chance of having a mug in your hand as oppose to a jo, so for self defense purpose, it's probably more useful to train mug-do, as opposed to aikijo etc.

RacoonAhhh, but this thread is both informative and enlightening. It is informative in its depiction of the uses of mundane kitchen utensils as weapons of mass destruction (something I for one had never considered) and it is enlightening in that it confirms what I always suspected, that very strange people practice martial arts [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/wink.gif[/IMG]